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The boy is beautiful, though the likeness is not voluptuous in a way which might suggest carnal feelings in the maker or to a viewer. The boy has elegant and expressive fingers. I observe that the sculptor has used pigments sparingly on the smooth surface of the marble.
I often find pigments on sculptures too garish, as though the artist wishes to impose by force the appearance of life. But here, the light pigments merely suggest the living flesh. There is also sadness in this image, though not in the expression or manner of its subject. I find myself thinking with melancholy that this young person, like most of us espied at a similar moment of our own lives, may have a successful or an unsuccessful life, and will in time grow old and die. How can a sculptor make a likeness which causes poignant thoughts like these? Does beauty naturally cause in us a sense of its evanescence? Or is it the contrast between the beauty depicted and the cool hard marble from which the statue is made? I draw breath.
Philodemus says: ‘My lord Simonides, this likeness of your son is ... well, I can’t find words to describe how fine it is. May we ask who made it?’
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